9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

www.ATIBOOK.irGlossary 192Point of view Sometimes referred to simply as POV, as in screenplay layouts. Point ofview highlights the importance of personal response, the individual consciousness,including thoughts, feelings and sensations, as a character moves through the changingscenes and settings of a story.Polyphony A term developed by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin to convey the manyvoicedelement that delivers modern fiction from single monologic discourse. A classicexample is Magwitch’s report of his trial in Great Expectations where he imitates thevoices of his counsel and co-defendant whilst retaining his own London vernacular. Thechapter ‘Dialogue in the Modern Novel’ in David Lodge’s After Bakhtin, (1990)examines some recent examples of polyphony.Realism In this book I develop two branches of the term: topic realism and realisttechnique. The first refers to a preference for real-world subject matter in the choice ofscenes, attitudes and experiences, while the second is about ‘making things real’ throughclose-up focus and detailed depiction. Magic realism ignores the restrictions of topicsubject matter and in its place chooses fantasy, fairy-tale, folklore or mythical charactersand settings. Realist approaches still dominate modern fiction and also influence othergenres.Reality effects ‘An old Chinese takeaway leaked orange liquid all over her suedeshoes.’, (Wilson, p. 162) is a good example of a reality effect, making one detail illustratethe general state of things you want to convey, strongly implying a sense of ‘having beenthere’.Resonance An image, word, reference or event has resonance if it tunes in tosomething in our cultural life, our understanding of our past, our hopes or fears for thefuture. Words can have resonance and gradually lose it—the word ‘sin’ for example.Resonance is therefore a measure of cultural change. In terms of music, a vibrating stringhas no resonance without the hollow body or box of the instrument. An image hasresonance if it grips hold of our shared preoccupations. An example is the image ofempty streets, London under attack in H.G.Wells’s War of the Worlds.Ritual A type of action (usually in public) in which each event is predictable. Ritualalways follows prescribed rules. Even slight disruptions can therefore carry high levels ofdramatic consequence.Sequences Writing for the stage can benefit from a clear sense of sections in a scene,of sequences of exchange within a dialogue, as one topic shifts into another. Radio scriptsrely heavily on very clear sequences of exchange, ending with a stop or fade out.Status transactions In drama, characters can gain or lose status, generating highlevels of consequence and therefore interest for audiences. Actors can train themselvesthrough improvisation to exhibit high or low status traits, and to move between statuslevels.Story world A state of things in which time is shaped by unusual events, changes,moments of consequence, challenge and crisis, where characters become more thanusually aware of the moving edge of time.Surrealism The idea of distortion has always appealed to writers and artists. It poses alink between the creative and mental disturbance. Both can be an attack on assimilation—on the sameness and dull familiarity of the so-called real world. In practice, even theappetite for shock comes from an understanding of how we receive messages, makelinks, act and think logically about ourselves. Realism and Surrealism continue along the